News and information

Apple is making a big, big move

The tech giant is going on a hiring spree for some of the best minds in virtual and augmented reality -- and they're hoping it pays big dividends.

Apple is stocking up on more talent in augmented reality, showing that the tech giant is becoming more and more focused on the area as competition heats up. Apple hired Zeyu Li from Magic Leap, an augmented reality startup, who could help Apple in the areas of virtual reality and driverless cars. The company also brought in Yury Petrov, who had worked on Facebook’s Oculus virtual reality platform.

Apple really went into a hiring frenzy starting in May 2015 when it purchased the augmented reality startup Metaio, according to a Business Insider report. The hiring comes not a moment too soon, as Apple faces stiff competition from Google, which may resurrect Glass, a concept it had all but abandoned earlier. Also, Microsoft is pursuing its HoloLens, and even SnapChat is working on their own augment reality glasses.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has called augmented reality “incredibly interesting” in the past. The tech giant has been quite silent on its formal plans in the arena other than hinting at the fact that they have augmented reality projects. The company doesn’t have any publicly available products in contrast to Google, Microsoft and Facebook.

The hirings of Petrov and Li show that the company could introduce something to the public sooner rather than later, however. And perhaps all this secrecy portends to a huge announcement down the road — something Apple loves to do.

The Financial Times reported back in January that Apple had hundreds of staff working on building prototypes of potential headset configurations.